Preferences: Microsoft Academic

This dialog box appears when you choose the Tools > Preferences command from the main menu and go to the Microsoft Academic tab. It allows you to edit a number of settings that affect the way Publish or Perish deals with queries to Microsoft Academic.

Note: The options in this dialog box are intended for users who are familiar with data sources such as Microsoft Academic and client-server communication using the HTTP[S] protocol. If you are not, then you are strongly advised to leave these options at their default values unless specifically instructed otherwise.

General

This box contains general options relating to the way Publish or Perish issues queries to Microsoft Academic.

Option

Description

Query URL

Enter the URL that Publish or Perish should use to perform Microsoft Academic queries.

User-Agent string

Set the HTTP User-Agent string that Publish or Perish uses to identify itself to Microsoft Academic. See User-Agent string syntax for details.

Subscription key

Enter the Microsoft Academic subscription key that Publish or Perish should use when submitting queries to the Microsoft Academic server. See Microsoft Academic subscription key for information about obtaining a subscription key if you don't have one already.

Request rate limiter

This box contains options that determine how Publish or Perish limits the rate at which requests are sent to Microsoft Academic.

Requests are related to queries but are not the same:

Each query translates to one or more requests for results that are potentially sent to Microsoft Academic. Currently, each request returns up to 1000 results, so a single query that returns, say, 1500 results in all requires 2 individual requests (1 x 1000 full + 1 x 500 partial).

A request may be satisfied from Publish or Perish's own cache, in which case the request is not sent to Microsoft Academic (unless you use Lookup Direct).

If you sent too many requests to Microsoft Academic or if the requests follow each other too quickly, Microsoft Academic may block further requests.

The request rate limiter options help you to keep the number of requests sent to Microsoft Academic down to acceptable levels.

Option

Description

Maximum number ofresults per query

Enter the maximum number of results that Publish or Perish should retrieve for each query. Microsoft Academic has no preset limit of its own, but you can set a reasonable maximum if you are only interested in the most relevant results for each query. This also reduces the total number of requests that Publish or Perish sends to Microsoft Academic.

Maximum request rate <n> requests/minute

Enter the maximum number of requests per minute that Publish or Perish should send to Microsoft Academic. This is a short-term limit and only takes into account the request rate over the past 60 seconds.

If this limit is exceeded, then Publish or Perish will delay sending the next request until the request rate has fallen below the maximum that is set here.

Use adaptive request rate

Check this box to slow down the request rate when Publish or Perish detects that the request rate approaches certain preset limits; clear this box to keep sending requests at the maximum rate. We recommend that you leave this option checked.

Show request rate warnings

Check this box to display warnings when Publish or Perish detects that the request rate approaches certain preset limits; clear this box to suppress those warnings. We recommend that you leave this option checked.

Show Yellow warning if rate exceeds <n> requests/hour

Enter the threshold for "Yellow" query rate warnings. This is a medium-term limit and takes into account the request rate over the past hour. The actual limit is an empirical value based on the Microsoft Academic subscription query rates; we recommend setting this option to 1500 or less.

This option is used for two purposes:

If the Use adaptive request rate option is checked, it acts as a threshold for the adaptive request rate

If the Show request rate warnings option is checked, exceeding this rate triggers a warning

Show Red warning if rate exceeds <n> requests/hour

Enter the threshold for "Red" query rate warnings. This is a medium-term limit and takes into account the request rate over the past hour. The actual limit is an empirical value based on the Microsoft Academic subscription query rates; we recommend setting this option to 1800 or less.

This option is used for two purposes:

If the Use adaptive request rate option is checked, it acts as an upper limit for the adaptive medium-term request rate

If the Show request rate warnings option is checked, exceeding this rate triggers a warning

Keep cached results for <n> days

Enter the number of days to keep the query results from queries. The longer this period, the fewer accesses are required to satisfy repeated queries. Any updates in the query results only become visible after the cache period has expired, so you don't want to make this period too long.

Other options

The following additional options are available in the form of push buttons:

Option

Description

Reset to defaults

Click this button to reset all fields to their "factory" defaults. This is useful if you have made changes, but decide to start from a known base again.

Note: The Subscription key field is not reset by this command.

Clear the cache

Click this button to clear the entire results cache. This forces subsequent queries to access Microsoft Academic directly, which might be useful after a (suspected) update on Microsoft Academic, or if you have reason to believe that the cached results are somehow invalid.

Show statistics

Click this button to open the Data provider information dialog box with current statistics and settings for the underlying data provider (i.e., Microsoft Academic).

Web master of Harzing.com and developer of the Publish or Perish software, among other things. He holds BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering, a PhD in Operations Research, and likes to watch academic life from a safe distance.